Humanities
by ForeverChasingDreams
Summary: Mycroft muses on his brother's life, and his own part. Sherlock's not really a sociopath, so where did this diagnosis come from? Even Holmes brothers are human deep inside.  warnings: slash, drugs


_A/N: Sherlock belongs to the BBC and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle_

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><p><strong>Define: Humanities<strong>

- Studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills)

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><p>'<em>They shall have stars at elbow and foot;<em>

_Though they go mad they shall be sane;_

_Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;_

_Though lovers be lost love shall not;_

_And death shall have no dominion.'_

_(Dylan Thomas)_

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><p>Mycroft knows that Sherlock never coined himself as emotionless. He doesn't know where the misunderstanding came from, but Sherlock was not the first one to describe himself as a sociopath. No, that had been him, long ago, after a seven year old Sherlock had done something irritating again, like steal a carefully finished piece of coursework to use in an experiment or something. He'd snapped at him, like always, and Sherlock had simply shrugged in response, seemingly uncaring that he had just ruined Mycroft's work. Mycroft didn't know why he'd chosen then to say it, nor why he'd said it in the first place, but it had slipped out.<p>

"You're such a sociopath," he had said harshly, and Sherlock's face had displayed confusion. 'Sociopath' wasn't in the seven year old's dictionary and he'd experienced smugness then in that way that only annoyed older brothers can. But even he had not predicted the results.

Sherlock had come back to him an hour later, his face pleased.

"A sociopath," he'd said, "is a person that has an extremely antisocial attitude and behaviour, and a lack of conscience." Mycroft had been faintly impressed; how many kids could have remembered that?

Then Sherlock had ruined it by sticking out his tongue and saying "ha!" before strolling out of the room. Mycroft had sighed and glared, and no more had been said about it for a while.

But when Sherlock next did something stupid or rude or unkind or simply thoughtless, as he was prone to do, he would defend himself with a short phrase.

"I'm a sociopath," he'd remind Mycroft. "Get used to it."

Mycroft would feel faintly sick hearing those words from a small child under ten. Rivalry or not, even he didn't think Sherlock was seriously a sociopath. Annoying, yes. Sociopath? No.

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><p>Looking back now, Mycroft knows that that was the start of it. Sherlock is a genius, there's no denying that, but he was never emotionless until Mycroft gave him an excuse to be. He knows Sherlock found it easier to hide behind the mask of sociopathy than to deal with the bullying, the taunts, and the indifference he received at home. Neither of them had the best upbringing – an absent father, an uncaring mother – but Mycroft found his home at school, among those influential children who now make up a large portion of the government. He made his way in life, but Sherlock was left at home, alone. Knowing what happened as a result, Mycroft would do anything to go back and change those years so that he took more notice, so that Sherlock wasn't left to his own devices to deal with his brilliant mind and ever-consuming boredom in the only way he could.<p>

He knows when John Watson arrives that this will probably end the same way all Sherlock's friendships (a term he uses loosely) do: with the person walking out of his 'freaky' brother's life and never looking back. Mycroft would do anything to spare his brother the pain that he knows it causes, no matter how much he may hide behind his sociopathic mask. But he's learnt by now to leave Sherlock to live his own life, and be ever prepared to pick up the pieces.

_Look after him, _he silently begs Dr Watson as he outwardly asks him to spy on his brother. Still, he doesn't expect much from this partnership.

Therefore, he is pleasantly surprised when Watson hangs around for a long time. Every time the doctor goes with Sherlock to a crime scene, or saves his life, or helps him, Mycroft has to tell himself not to get his hopes up. He has to be ready to step in and help Sherlock get his life back together again.

But soon, even he cannot ignore the affection in Watson's voice when he talks to Sherlock, nor can he ignore the simple damning fact: it has been months, and John Watson is still here.

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><p>"Stop protecting me!" Sherlock snaps at one point, after Mycroft again helps with the aid of his surveillance team.<p>

_Oh my dear brother, _he thinks to himself, _I have to. I have to make up for my mistakes all those years ago. _

"Perhaps when you stop attempting to kill yourself with those cases of yours," he says outwardly, shrugging indifferently.

Sherlock visibly seethes, but turns away. John looks confused at the interaction.

_Perhaps it's time you find out exactly what happened between Sherlock and me, _he muses. _It would be good to have someone else looking._

But he knows that John Watson will not listen to him, Sherlock's hated brother. So he enlists the aid of someone else.

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><p>He watches the camera as Lestrade and Watson greet each other cheerfully. Sherlock may not always get along with the detective, but Watson and he are good friends.<p>

"What did you want to tell me about?" John asks curiously, and Mycroft turns the sound up so that he can hear more easily.

Lestrade visibly shifts awkwardly. "It's about . . . Sherlock," he says slowly. John's face gets even more confused.

"You're a good friend of Sherlock, and well-" he trails off.

"Spit it out," John says impatiently, and a hint of a smirk appears on Mycroft's face.

"It would be good to have another person to keep an eye on him," Lestrade says hurriedly.

"For what?" John asks, frowning slightly in thought. _Yes, _Mycroft thinks, _use your brain and you'll go far._

" . . . Drugs."

Mycroft winces. _It sounds quite bad when said so bluntly_, he thinks as John stares in shock.

My brother: the drug addict.

"Sherlock . . . he takes drugs?" Mycroft is relieved to realise that John doesn't sound disgusted, just . . . worried?

"Took," corrects Lestrade. "He cleaned himself up a few years ago, but there has been, um, relapses."

"And you want me to- what? Make sure he doesn't take them again?"

"Yeah, that's about right," Lestrade nods, sounding relieved that the worse part is over.

"Why are you telling me now?" John asks shrewdly.

The detective inspector shrugs. "You've been around quite a while," he answers truthfully. "Thought you ought to know."

"Why?" questions John thoughtfully. Lestrade looks confused.

"I dunno, I just- You have a right to-"

"No, no," John interrupts. "Why did Sherlock get into drugs?"

Lestrade sighs. "I'm not really sure," he admits. "I'm not sure even Mycroft does. I guess it's to help live with his mind, you know? It kills him sometimes, that mind of his."

"He doesn't know how to shut down, how to relax without getting consumed by boredom," John agrees in a low voice, and Mycroft is surprised by how well the man has already gotten to know Sherlock.

"I think they just . . . help him focus. Help him concentrate maybe?" Lestrade looks sad. "I mean, none of us really know what it's like for him to live with a mind like his."

"So bright," John mutters, "but so damaging."

"Yeah," Lestrade says softly. "But so were the drugs."

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><p>Lestrade is wrong. Mycroft knows why Sherlock took to drugs when he was a teenager. Sherlock never had anybody in his life, no one to take an interest or to care or to help him deal with his mind that crippled him as a young child. He used to spend hours in his room, not talking, not doing anything, just rocking as his mind took over and his body lost control. He couldn't stop it as a child; couldn't stop noticing, thinking, calculating. But their father was away on work, their mother indifferent, and Mycroft far too wrapped up in his own life. He never learnt to deal and was bullied because of his intellect and odd periods of shut-down. He buried himself in his persona of sociopathy-<p>

_(-I'm sorry, brother-)_

- and tried to convince himself he didn't care, when Mycroft knew he really did.

The drugs helped him forget, for a short time, and they helped to control his mind: to narrow down his thinking so he could focus on one thing, and think perfectly. But it came at a price, as all things do.

Even a genius sociopath is not immune to an addiction.

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><p>Sherlock went off to university because he didn't know what else to do. By this point, Mycroft was flying high, climbing the ranks of the government at an unprecedented speed and collecting his network of supporters. He never aimed to be Prime Minister or anything else so overt, <em>this <em>was far better. And Sherlock slipped through the gaps yet again, with no one to notice as he fell further and further from the rails.

He rang Sherlock's mobile once, when he realised two months had passed since the last time they'd spoken. Sherlock was in his second year, and Mycroft really had no idea what was happening in his brother's life.

_(-it scares him now, a little bit, to think he could have been so indifferent to his brother at a time when Sherlock probably needed him most-)_

"Sherlock?" he said, wondering why no one had said hello.

"Who's this?" a sharp voice questioned, completely blank.

_(-how could it have gotten to the point that Sherlock no longer remembered his voice?-)_

"It's Mycroft, Sherlock," he replied.

"Oh," Sherlock huffed. "So nice of you to call."

Mycroft winced, understanding the hidden 'why so long?'

"How is everything?" he asked, smoothly ignoring the subtext of Sherlock's comment. Apologising was a somewhat foreign concept to him at that time.

"Oh, just wonderful, brother," Sherlock replied with that infernal sarcasm.

Mycroft heard a high pitched laugh at the other end of the phone, followed by a series of coughs and faint screams.

"What's going on?" he asked. Sherlock didn't _socialise_. Where on earth could he be?

"Nothing," Sherlock answered sullenly, and hang up.

"Sherlock?" Mycroft said. "Sherlock?"

That was when he first began to suspect something was wrong.

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><p>It was easy enough for Mycroft to track down his brother with his ever-growing network. His brother was apparently living in a dump of a flat in a crime filled part of London, having dropped out of university several months ago.<p>

_(-how could he possibly have not known?-)_

The flat was rumoured to be full of drug addicts and Mycroft was slightly panicked to think of his brother living there. Before, it had been a suspicion, a nagging worry in his mind – _what if? what if?_ – but he had never had any proof that Sherlock was on drugs, only his erratic behaviour when he was younger and he visited home during his university holidays, and the times when Sherlock would sound panicked at the thought of him entering his room. But that could have meant anything.

He organised a date to meet, and turned up at the café fully expecting Sherlock not to come. But come he did, his tall, skinny-

_(-when had he gotten that thin?-)_

-frame looking almost weighed down. If he was on drugs, then he certainly wasn't on a high right then. He looked haggard, his clothes dirty and his eyes tired. Mycroft saw him, and knew.

And it was his fault.

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><p>After finally getting Sherlock to admit he was on drugs – he'd had to force his sleeves up on his jacket on the off chance he was injecting and there would be marks left from it, which there was – he made him quit. Admittedly, he didn't go about it in the right way; locking him in his house until he was thoroughly over the withdrawal wasn't the best way of dealing with a recovering drug addict who didn't <em>want <em>to stop the drugs. So Sherlock had left, and gone straight back to it.

It wasn't until Sherlock met Lestrade and experienced the high of a crime scene that he found any incentive to stop. Lestrade told him that he would take him on to help with the cases, but only if he was clean first. Mycroft knows that Sherlock ignored this for a while, but an accidental overdose managed to scare him into withdrawal where rational methods had not. Mycroft saw his brother on that hospital bed after the OD, pale and fragile looking as a ventilator had breathed for him.

_(-he didn't think he'd ever been that scared-)_

Sherlock went straight from the hospital into rehab, which wasn't exactly his choice but a necessity Mycroft had insisted on, and there he started to get off the drugs, aided by the thought of a future partnership with Lestrade and crime scenes. Mycroft had been refused access to Sherlock at that point, his brother resentful and angry. He may have wanted to break his addiction, but he wanted to do it _his _way. Not Mycroft's.

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><p>"Sherlock has never really forgiven me," Mycroft says quietly. "He's angry about my absence when he was younger, and my insistence on him quitting the drugs. He never wanted to be forced into anything, and that's what I did to him."<p>

"He's got John now," the other man says in reassurance. "John knows what to look for, and he understands Sherlock in a way that we can never hope to."

"I know," Mycroft sighs, looking down at their interlocked hands. "John is the first person in years to realise that Sherlock's human too."

"He's a good guy," the man replies, and Mycroft doesn't even know who they're talking about anymore, and he finds that it doesn't matter. He leans down and places a light kiss on Lestrade's – _Greg's _– lips.

After all, if Sherlock can be human, why can't he?

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><p><em>AN: Hope you enjoyed reading my foray into the Sherlock fandom. For those waiting for an update on Changes, I am now on page 120 on the fandom - a third of the way! An update of Changes should hopefully be coming within a few weeks, but for now, please enjoy the fantasticness of Sherlock :)_

_Dreams x_


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